VIDEO: Monday morning quarterbacking Super Bowl LIX

Hey, how about that Super Bowl LIX! If you're a KC fan, or a KC bettor (even worse), you didn't have a lot to cheer about, as the Chiefs failed to cover the spread. As defending champions, sportsbooks had the Chiefs as 1.5-point favourites before the game. The game was expected to be high-scoring, with an over-under of 48.5. And so it was, but unsophisticated people [like Walt. Ed.] who just look at the raw scores, thought it was a pretty unexciting contest.

Of course nowadays there's a lot more to bet on than the scores.but there were plenty of bets that were very close. The national anthem, for example, was right at the line for the time but was officially scored just under the 120.5-second line. From the coin toss to how many times Taylor Swift was on camera to the Gatorade bath and the MVP, the New York Times has the results of all the major Super Bowl prop bets in a "party props sheet". [You didn't think it would be free, didja|? Ed.]

And how about that half-time show? Walt switched to a rerun of I Love Lucy on a cable channel, but according to the lengthy and fulsome NYT review, it came down to another round in the fight the star attraction, Kendrick Lamar, and Drake, the alleged Canadian, who was somewhere else.

Mr Lamar (né Kendrick Lamar Duckworth) made  his Drake diss ÈNot Like Us" the centerpiece of his set. He wore denim-on-denim, often called a "Canadian tuxedo", a potential dig at Drake, who was actually born ion the Great No-longer-white North. While performing recently in Australia, Drake told fans, in a possible allusion to the fallout from his feud with Lamar, that he is still "very much alive." Just not in the USA or Canada, though.

Some display of "American culture", eh. I might have written "Black culture", but in truth present-day American culture is Black culture. In its review, the NYT reminds us that Kendrick Lamar is a Pulitzer Prize winner. That there tells you all you need to know.

Agent 78, whose native tongue is not English, said, "Am I supposed to talk like that? I have no idea what he was saying." Agent 3, who is a dual citizen residing in Canuckistan, wrote, "If this is what Canada will be like if it becomes the 51st state, fuggedaboutit!"

At least one person who was part of the halftime show had a different idea of how to use the performance to advance an agenda. Toward the end of the set, he pulled out a banner combining the flags of Palestine and Sudan that featured a heart and a fist. Was this part of the performance, another level of commentary woven into a show already packed with it? Thanks to the Times of India, we have video.

 

In footage captured from inside the stadium but not broadcast, that individual was chased off the main stage just a few seconds after whipping out the flag. He ran around the field for a spell before he was tackled by a coterie of security guards in suits and carried off the field. That revolution, at least, would not be televised.

Another aspect of American culture was on display after the game, as 1000s of Eagles fans spilled out of bars and onto the streets of Philthydelphia after watching their team humble the Kansas City Chiefs. [Isn't "Chiefs" kind of racist, like "Redskins"? Ed.]

The city had opted not to grease the light poles even though a fan died two weeks ago after falling from a light pole after the NFC Championship Game. Despite that tragedy, Eagles fans showed no hesitation in climbing to the top of light poles, cars, construction vehicles, garbage trucks, small buildings, and almost anything else they could find.

Some fans clashed with and taunted police as officers attempted to keep the crowd confined to certain areas and under control. Dozens of fireworks were set off in the streets. However, it seems as though most Eagles fans wanted to climb things. Pole greasing and pleas to "PLEASE not climb them" didn't work.  

However, the joyful demonstrations were mostly peaceful, with not a lot of "reparations shopping", possibly because many businesses in the City of Bruvverly Love have been closed permanently because of... you know... something white people did.

That's enough. No more football until next year. Ed. 

Further reading (added at 1700 FMT): "Super Bowl: Kendrick Lamar Performs Song Calling Rapper Drake a 'Pedophile'", Breitbart News, 10/2/25.

A sad commentary on American arts and entertainment

My grandkids, or the younger ones anyway, were been bugging their parents to see Dumbo, the latest Hollywood remake. My recent illness gave me an excuse not to be part of a family outing, but when they descended on the ole homestead and mentioned that the movie was playing in nearby Fort Mudge, and they thought I needed to get out of the house, I was trapped. Trapped like a rat. So I went. Great modern animation and special effects, kind of a lame, PC (pro animal rights and "inclusivity") version of the original story. Harmless, gormless entertainment.

When I see movies like this and the remake of Alice in Wonderland, well done though they may be, I can't help but wonder if no-one in Hollywood has any new ideas. It seems today that all we see is remakes in movies and remakes on TV. And some of them, extensions of franchises that are well past their best-before dates (Hello Star Wars!) are truly dreadful. Where's the creative talent, the imagination that begat the original movies, which were themselves adapted from stories that some truly talented writers devised a hundred years ago?

This is hardly a new thought. Here's what Brooks Atkinson, one of America's leading drama critics, had to say, nearly seven decades ago.

Something elusive and intangible seems to have drained the vitality out of the theatre and perhaps out of American arts as well. No one knows the reason exactly. But could it be that the spiritual climate in which we are now living smothers art that is really creative, and that the emphasis on public expression of all kinds is toward meekness and conformity? [My emphasis. Walt]

People are playing safe. They hesitate to say what they think. The intellectual and artistic life of the country has been flattened out. ...ignorant heresy-hunting and...bigoted character-assassination are succeeding. The hoodlums are in control here as well as in Russia, and the theatre begins to look as insipid in the one place as in the other.... We cannot expect to have vital art in our theatre if we emulate totalitarian countries and yield the control of cultural life to the Yahoos and hoodlums.

Quoted in William Shirer's Midcentury Journey, 1955. That was well before Mr Atkinson or Mr Shirer had heard the expression "political correctness", but political correctness is what is described in the emphasized words. Political correctness is killing not only political thought but also our collective imagination. We have become a society where original, non-conforming thought is the greatest of all sins. Sad.

Postscript: I can't get over how, the older Danny DeVito gets, the more he looks like me!